<p>My two top schools are Berkeley and Harvey Mudd. They are two great schools, but very different. FYI, I did post this under Harvey Mudd's forum too.</p>
<p>I'm afraid if I go to either, it will be so competitive that my GPA will suck and I won't get into a good grad school. I know as a senior in high school I shouldn't even worry about that, but it is important. I have a friend who went to Berkeley as a Chemical Engineer, worked his butt off and got a 3.2 GPA (2.8 is the average) and the only grad school he got accepted to was UCI. I know there are other contributing factors like undergraduate research, but I'm worried if I go to either of these school I will one, have a terrible GPA, and two, be considered stupid. I by no means expect to be the smartest. I like being surrounded by people smarter than me. I just want to know that anything between a 3.4 and 3.8 isn't completely out of my reach. :/</p>
<p>What do you guys think? Would I be better off going to say, UCSD? (Which is a pretty good school as well by general standards)</p>
<p>I just don't want to be screwed with my GPA and feel like an idiot compared to everyone else and not end up getting into a good grad school.</p>
<p>I know I may be worrying a bit too much, but I would really appreciate some honest advice. Thanks.</p>
<p>I’m honestly not sure. I want to declare myself as a mechanical engineering major, but I might switch to environmental or nuclear. I really am not sure yet.</p>
<p>I’ve taken honors physics (school didn’t offer AP) and I am taking AP Physics C this year with Stanford’s EPGY. I am currently in AP Calculus BC. I got a 4 on the AP Calc AB exam after skipping precalc. Still, a 4 isn’t stellar when comparing to most of the kids at top tier schools.</p>
<p>The grade deflation here sucks but there are people who get 4.0s throughout their entire four years here which proves that as long as that option is available to everyone then it is possible. Although I will be honest with you. Because it’s so frustrating to get a high gpa no matter how hard you work I’m attempting to transfer out… It’s definitely not the main reason but one of my reasons.</p>
<p>Depends on how capable you think you are. If you are the type of person in high school who rarely studies outside of class and yet still somehow manage great grades, then you probably learn at a quick enough pace to do well at Cal, provided that you still have the drive to study (I have seen many people who easily aced their high school classes without studying and attempted the same in college. It didn’t work out too well for them).</p>
<p>A 3.4 is definitely possible, as that amounts to a B+ average with an occasional A- or A thrown in. It’s not that challenging to maintain such an average, but the gap between an A- and an A or even a B+ and an A- is quite large.</p>
<p>For example, I got 170.7 point total on CS61B and my friend got 171.3. I got a A- while he got an A. Also my other friend had 165.4 and got B+ while another friend got an A- with 165.5. The borderline between the grades can be very vague sometimes.</p>
<p>I’ll agree with atomicfusion in the sense that Berkeley engineering programs can require much fewer courses and may not require all the grueling ones. For those who want them, of course, you’re looking at a world-class engineering school and there’s enough to make anyone’s mind melt. </p>
<p>I’m not sure that one can say “You’ll be fine” for either school however in terms of graduate school. Sweating bullets at Mudd doesn’t get you into grad school, and neither does getting thrashed by Berkeley engineering. Both offer you lots of chances to succeed, but being at the bottom of the heap in good schools doesn’t really help you at all. If anything, probably better to be at the bottom in a small school like Mudd where professors can still take notice of you. Recommendations are very important (those from research supervisors can help tons for an application-oriented field like engineering).</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The difficulty of getting in is not a reliable indicator of the amount of grade deflation.</p></li>
<li><p>Those statistics say that Mudd is harder to get into anyway.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>^
What made you say Midsmith doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Looks like the stats he presented is a pretty valid data that indeed, Berkeley CoE is as hard to get into as Mudd, if not slightly harder. </p>
<p>About 10 years ago, I got into Mudd with only 1460 SAT scores. I was turned down at Berkeley.</p>
Random would be 48, 52, 47, 59.
You don’t think 50 is reasonable? What would you assign for the SAT bump to account for single-sitting? What’s your best SAT in a single sitting & best combined SAT? I’ve made my point.</p>